MIDDLETOWN — Despite the bitter cold conditions, more than 190 members of the United Way of Northern Shenandoah gathered at Lord Fairfax Community College to elect its new board of directors and honor its volunteers of the year Thursday evening.

MIDDLETOWN — When Philomena O’Brien was a little girl, she moved with her family from Limerick, Ireland, to Rochester, New York. After spending the 1980s raising her children in Ireland, O’Brien came back to the states, where she eventually opened an Irish Pub with her then-husband Brian Coughlan.